April 21, 2014

Increasingly, journalists who cover the White House are concluding that the smears are part of a conscious strategy to distract voters from Obamacare, the sluggish economy, and foreign-policy reverses; the attacks are intended, the thinking goes, to drive up resentment and hence turnout among the Democratic base.

Major Garrett, the CBS White House correspondent, has talked with White House aides who confirm that the administration is working from the theory of “stray voltage,” as developed by former White House senior adviser David Plouffe. “The theory goes like this,” Garrett wrote. “Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness,”

Deliberately misstating information about key issues in order to keep certain issues before the public is often a premeditated strategy. “The tactic represents one more step in the embrace of cynicism that has characterized President Obama’s journey in office,” John Dickerson wrote at Slate. “Facts, schmacts. As long as people are talking about an issue where my party has an advantage with voters, it’s good.”

Frank James of NPR is another mainstream journalist who has concluded that the use of incendiary rhetoric is part of an electoral strategy.

If mainstream journalists have noticed, will they play along, or call them out?

There are some pretty explicit fracture planes on the left. Education is one with some lefties very supportive of education choice and others lining up with socialized education. Nuclear power's another.

Not to say the left's tearing itself apart on those issues but the splits are there and they injure the image of a united front the left always like to present.

But Obama's injured himself with many of his supporters by being a disaster on so many fronts.

The incredibly stupid roll-out of Obamacare shook his supporters. Not their faith in the fashionableness of socialized medicine, that it would make the U.S. almost as civilized and sophisticated as Europe, but in the incredibly poor implementation of the policy.

After a decade or so of increasingly complex and worthwhile web technology to have something with as high a profile as Obamacare show up on the Internet in such a poor state really hit a lot of lefties hard. The debacle suggests a level of incompetence that's undeniable no matter how hard lefties try to explain it away. Casts a pall over other assumptions the left needs.

Then there's the increasingly hard to ignore debacle foreign affairs has become.

My guess is that the lefties of the media won't have the courage to confront their disastrously bad judgment but also won't have any enthusiasm for the left Obama represents. A good deal of the support the left garners in the next election will be pro forma and without enthusiasm. Whether that's enough to hammer the political left in the mid-terms isn't clear but it sure won't help them.

I really don't think these guys are desperate. I think this is just how they fight. There's no need for them to be desperate. Which of their programs has been stopped? Which of their programs is in danger of being shut down? They're winning all over the place. And with the amount of voter fraud and intimidation they've got implemented, I don't think they care a hoot for what the polls show. It certainly hasn't made them slow down or otherwise moderate anything.

Whenever a Republican official or spokesperson, or any conservative is interviewed about these distractions they must always close their comments with "But the Democrats promised you if you liked your health plan, you could keep it. If you liked your doctor, you could keep them. They were lying to you then and they knew they were lying. All of these other issues are being raised to distract you from the mess they made of your healthcare. Don't forget that." This has to become our version of "Carthago delenda est"

mainstream journalist is too broad a term to use any more. I prefer the StateRunMedia(tm). That would be the obvious propagandists who have been in the tank for Obama, and have everything to lose if they dont double down until he is gone, and the elections in 2014 and 2016 are secured for a Democrat majority- MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NYT, WAPO, PBS, and the whole host of bottom feeders on the web, PuffHo's, Kos, DU, and the pretend to be "independent" intelligentsia hangers on- Slate, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, etc.

If you think the fraud and abuse and vote rigging was bad before, get ready for the big finale. What have they got to lose? 40 years of progressive activism and community collaboration and NGO collusion to secure "the Progressive Agenda".

Who is going to prosecute them? John Boehner? Mitch O'Connell? Eric Holder? the NSA? Wall Street? Google Geeks and FakeBook'ers?

We are a nation of alcoholics who are in denial, who haven't hit bottom yet. And sometimes that bottom kills you... get ready for this to get a LOT uglier, before it gets better...

"If mainstream journalists have noticed, will they play along, or call them out?"

I thought journalist was a species of Bigfoot. They are rumored to have been seen around the Chesapeake area, but no sightings have been confirmed for many years.

I believe that major TV networks and newspapers have instructed their employees to immediately destroy the mythical beasts if encountered since the noise from "mainstream journalists" can interfere with effectiveness of The Narrative.

If mainstream "journalists" are, in fact, socialist operatives with by-lines, then the notion of them "noticing" the tactic and calling the socialists out are about as likely as an attorney exhibiting shame.

On the other hand, "White House aides... confirm that the administration is working from the theory of “stray voltage...The theory goes like this,” Garrett wrote. “Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness”

How interesting that the same tactic doesn't work when the Republicans try it. Gee, I wonder why?

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